Part 7 - Ruin

Clio’s mind was a vast and tangled network as complex as all the connections of the Weave itself. Every junction was occupied by clues of the cursed house that they had delved deeper and deeper into. Every hint, every query, every horror, and evidence of death created a sprawling map inside her mind.

Yet even splayed out in that vast tapestry, none of it had made sense to her. Not until she was staring down at a blood-stained altar. Though, once she was inside that flooded chamber, she knew it was all too late.

The truth was that the riddle was far too powerful and complex for her to unravel completely. But as a bead of sweat dropped from her nose onto the altar below, she realized how doomed they were. That bead of sweat was a piece of herself, and willingly or not, she had just offered it up on that altar.

In her reckoning, the house itself was an entity with power rivalling that of a demi-god. Within its structure, time slowed to a halt. From what Clio could gather, it fed on energy – Weave and fear of the poor fools that it lured within its wicked walls. She cursed herself for being one such fool.

As the rubble they were yet to investigate shook, Clio knew she didn’t have time for cursing. She held her holy symbol and prayed. Kai and Daphne still watched her from their platform. They were almost twenty meters away, across a flooded plain of brackish liquid. Despite her warning, they did not run, but held firm. Daphne even strung her bow.

Clio raised her shield and drew her silvered short sword. Prayer was still running through her head. She begged Iros to protect her now.

This far inside the belly of a demi-god, Clio could not feel her deity’s presence. All the same she prayed louder, yelling her Gods worship into the echoing walls of that dank chamber. If nothing else, it would banish the evil chanting that banged rhythms inside the back of her skull.

The rubble shook more intensely, and from the shadows in a cave behind it something moved. It was difficult to make out at first in the dim light. Clio couldn’t waste weave on illuminating the cavern. She was sure there would be more important magic she would need to spend her reserves on. She squinted her eyes and watched as a mass of flesh slowly slithered its way over the rubble.

It was massive. At least 5 metres tall, a being of writhing flesh, and limbs, and faces. It made almost no sound apart from the shifting of water and rubble that it displaced. However, as soon as it appeared the chanting inside Clio’s head grew louder.

The Dwarf looked over to her companions. She could barely make out the light pink and cerulean of their complexions. In the low light they were of a similar grey scale to the creature that had just appeared in front of her.

What she could see however, was that they were both frozen. The chanting had hypnotized them, and Clio knew what was running through their heads. “He is ancient, sacrifice all to him.”

The Dwarf had barely enough Weave in her reserve for one last spell. She had told herself to hold it for healing, as she was sure they would need it. She banged her shield off-rhythm as she watched the creature slide ever closer to the altar. Her friends could not break the hold that the chanting had on them. She had to change her tactics.

“In the name of Iros, I condemn you!” Clio screamed with far more gusto than she had ever mustered before.

She raised her sword hand, index and middle finger extended toward the creature. A bolt of weave shot out of her hand. It was a weak thing, more sound, and light than power. It streaked through the air and struck the creature with the noise a mallet makes as it strikes a gong.

A wave of Weave rippled out over the water from the point of impact. The mass of flesh seemed to be affected little, if at all. Clio faltered, alone on the altar as the creature slide toward her. Its slow steady pace unchanged.

Then, out of the darkness an arrow struck into the monster. It slid deep into one of the faces that coated the exterior. It pierced one of the many eyes, right up to the fletching.

Clio breathed a sigh of relief. She looked back to the platform. Daphne now stood alone. Bow in hand already notching another arrow.

Kai was nowhere to be seen. Clio didn’t hold it against him for fleeing. He didn’t have the kind of training or experience in combat that she and Daphne had. She’d been impressed with his new skills and the fact that he had made it so far. In truth, she was surprised someone as untested as Kai hadn’t tried to flee earlier.

“The other platform! Get to the other platform!” Daphne yelled as she loosed another arrow and drew a third.

Clio looked around and saw another platform, similar to the one Daphne was standing on. It was situated under the rubble that Kai had looked through before they had entered the prison, opposite the rubble the creature had emerged from. The mass of flesh had just made it to the bottom of the stairs.

Clio sheathed her sword. She threw the sharpest implement she could find on the altar at the limbs and faces. When it bounced off harmlessly, she decided following Daphne’s instruction was a much safer gamble. Looking now at the writhing mass of arms and legs and faces, Clio couldn’t think of a worse place to be than in the melee with that foul being.

The creature had cut off her escape. As it slithered forward, it put itself between Daphne and Clio. The Dwarf grimaced as she ran down the opposite stairs and into the thick fluid that flooded the chamber. Daphne had loosed two more arrows into the creature. Dark blood flowed from the puncture wounds.

Clio made her way through the liquid slightly faster now she wasn’t beholden to the steady rhythm that still pounded through her head. “He is ancient, sacrifice all to him!” It seemed the more she resisted it, the louder it became.

As Clio reached the stairs of the second platform, she thanked Iros they hadn’t caved like the others. She had just spared a passing thought for where Kai had run to, when a brick hurtled out of the rubble. It flew clear across the chamber at frightening speed. When it stuck the creature, it did so with such force that it punched a hole through its flesh the size of a fist.

“Where’s Clio?” Kai shouted from the other side of the rubble.

“Under you! Careful with your slinging.” Daphne called back as another of her arrows pinned an arm back against the body of undulating flesh.

Clio could hear bricks tumbling as she climbed the stairs. Holes were appearing in the rubble as more and more slid out of the way. She tripped on a cascade of stone that tumbled past her and into the water below. With desperate hands and feet she stood and charged up the incline.

“Get out of the way!” Clio yelled.

She hardly waited a heartbeat before charging through the rubble, shield first. Kai was in the next room; he’d fallen on his hands and knees to avoid being crushed by Clio’s charge. She quickly gave him a hand up before she heard Daphne scream.

Clio turned in time to see the creature, still clambering up the stairs. Only now, it was hurling Daphne’s arrows back at her. A multitude of arms sticking out from all directions off the gurgling mass were grasping arrows out of its own flesh and using them as projectiles.

Daphne clutched her arm momentarily from where she’d no doubt been hit by one of her own arrows. She only spared herself a moment before notching and firing another. Clio could tell immediately it lacked the power of her earlier shots.

The creature, now atop the altar was grabbing sacrificial implements and hurling them with ungodly force. Clio raised her shield just in time to block one and it clanged off the bronze with a sound as loud as thunder. Her arm jarred from the impact and her nerves buzzed from fingertip to shoulder.

From behind her shield, Clio heard Daphne scream again. The Dwarf lowered her shield just in time to see Daphne escape back into the prison.

Kai was already breathing hard. With seemingly no thought of himself he invested all his essence into launching two more hefty stones into the creature. One skimmed the outer flesh, barely damaging it. The other punched a hole so far into its central mass that Clio thought she could see through to the other side. Clio hurled a few stones by hand. They weren’t nearly as effective, but she saw that the creature was losing its structure.

Limbs and faces were sloughing off in chucks. They fell off the main body, sliding down the stairs and dissolved into the brackish liquid below. Even that sickly sound of decaying had an almost audible rhythm; “He is ancient, sacrifice all to him!”

Clio almost threw up when she realized what she had been wading through. Daphne managed to loose another arrow into the creature. The shot was weak. Daphne’s knees faltered and she collapsed to the floor.

“Daphne.” Clio called, then with a start, looked to Kai.

Kai was back on his hands and knees. He was gasping at breath as though he was seconds away from drowning. Clio could tell immediately that he had overextended himself.

She cursed herself for thinking he had fled earlier like some coward. He was trying to force his body to use Weave when his reserves were empty. He had surely used some of the Weave that kept him alive already. As he reached for another stone Clio stood on his hand, shield still raised.

“Enough. You’re no good to us dead.” She said.

Just at that moment, the creature, barely holding itself together let out a mighty bellow. All its remaining mouths opened and the sound they created was the ghastliest thing Clio had ever heard. She took a knee and tried to shield both ears before standing again. When she checked Kai, he wasn’t moving.

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For a moment she believed she had stopped him too late. She thought he had already used so much of the Weave that he had shattered his own Lens.

Then she saw him breathe. He was alive, though he had been stunned. Clio was sure it had been the creatures ghastly bellow that had done it. She looked over to Daphne and saw that the Tainted too was frozen, she had managed to get herself to her feet and was mid draw. Both companions paralysed with one bellow.

The mass of flesh swallowed another implement and shot it through one of its mouths toward Daphne. It struck the Tainted hard. Pinned in place she couldn’t attempt to dodge the projectile. The force of the impact jarred her body enough that the arrow she had notched shot free. It hurtled toward the centre of the chamber skewering a ghastly face whose visage was frozen in terror. Despite it, Daphne remained frozen.

Clio didn’t have to guess what was keeping her companions hypnotized. She knew what the creature wanted and what would be running through the minds of Daphne and Kai: “He is ancient, sacrifice all to him.”

Clio took a heartbeat to study the creature. It was then she noticed within its shuddering flesh that sloughed away in larger and larger chunks, there was a heart. From this distance it looked more like a mass of hearts. All beating in a steady rhythm, it all ran in time: “He is ancient, sacrifice all to him.”

Clio looked around frantically and spotted Kai’s dagger. She grasped it quickly, dropped her shield and threw. She threw with all her might and might that she did not possess. With that throw she prayed to Iros. She prayed to Atala and Veisu too, those two gods that had blessed their journey out of Illios. She prayed to strike true, and she prayed for the lives of her companions.

Time slowed as that dagger hurtled through the air. All the hopes and prayers of the Triumvirate rested on its sacred pilgrimage. As Clio watched it fly, end over end, it seemed to her that its rotations were just in time with a certain chanting. As it cut through the air, she could almost hear the knife chanting itself: “He is ancient, sacrifice all to him.”

The knife struck into the creature’s heart with all of Clio’s strength. Then, with the blessing of her god it sheared even further, cutting the pulsating mass in twain. Brackish blood spilt over the altar. The mass disintegrated, shedding away from itself.

Its remnants dripped into the cracks and crevices of the altar. A final sacrifice that spilled over onto the dais and even the stairs. Slowly, it dripped into the pool below.

The room began to shake. A deep low rumble. It kept a steady rhythm, though Clio could swear the words in her head felt different. “I am ancient. Sacrifice all to me.”

Dust fell from the ceiling and the rubble strewn about the floor found their piles added to with new stones. Clio looked about quickly. Kai was barely able to keep himself on his hands and knees. Daphne had fallen against the door between the chamber and the prison cells clutching her wounds.

Clio ran. She hammered down the narrow corridor past the prison cells until she reached Daphne. Red blood ran in rivulets off the Tainted’s leather armour and over her soft, pink skin. A few stones had begun dropping from solid sections of the ceiling. Clio ripped a couple of bandages from her pouch and in moments did what best she could to stop Daphne’s bleeding. Then, she helped her off the door.

“I can walk. Thank you, lovely.” Daphne groaned. Propping herself up.

“Kai can’t. We’ve got to run.” Clio said.

Daphne steeled herself with a nod and they were off. Together, they picked up the hefty Aquan and began up the stairs. Clio could hear the rumbling of tumbling stones behind her and urged the other two to move faster. They climbed. Up the stairs onto the next floor and further up again. Through the labyrinthine corridors that urged the travellers to become lost within their halls. It would be so much easier to become buried alive. “I am ancient. Sacrifice all to me.”

With as little backtracking as they could manage, they reached the tombs of the cursed houses original family. Across the hall were the secret stairs. So again, they climbed. Up five or six storeys worth of curling stairs. Their footsteps pounded out a steady rhythm. “I am ancient. Sacrifice all to me!” All the while the two women carried Kai, who could barely put one foot in front of the other.

Daphne groaned against her injuries. Clio breathed heavy. Shield on one arm, Kai on the other. Her legs and arms burned, but she forced herself forward, ever forward. Daphne faltered on a stair, close to the end of the staircase and almost brought all three of them tumbling down behind her.

Clio knew how unusual that was for the Tainted, usually so sure of foot. Then she saw Daphne clutching her chest. Not one of her physical wounds, but the wound that the Spectre had left her with.

Clio knew that Daphne was still suffering from that injury. Most likely, the most perilous of all the wounds she sported. She prayed her friend would hold.

Clio had no time to heal her. Even if she did, she had no Weave in her reserves to spend on such magic. Healing others had a hefty cost that always seemed disproportionate to the healing given. Instead, Clio grabbed Daphne’s hand to steady her and yelled at her to move forward. It seemed to have the desired effect.

The whole house was shaking now. The stones in the walls were shifting loose within their mortar. When they breached the third-floor landing, Clio watched as a statue from the building’s roof fell through the ceiling before crashing through the floor itself.

Daphne rested a hand on the door frame they had just exited as Kai dropped to his knees. They didn’t have the luxury of those seconds.

Clio yelled again. She called them fools and threatened to leave them there to die if they didn’t pull their weight. To her surprise. They did.

Kai managed to get to his feet on shaky knees and Daphne propped him up. They ran down the stairs, Clio bracing Kai’s other side. Shield raised as pieces of the ceiling collapsed in on them. The stairs began to fall away, and Clio found herself jumping down them, two and three at a time.

Kai could barely manage. He tripped and fell constantly, the other two dragging him to keep up. They went past the second floor just in time to see the mannequin crushed beneath a giant falling section of the third floor.

She could hear the supports and foundations groaning in a familiar rhythm. It groaned louder and louder every moment. “I am ANCIENT! Sacrifice ALL to ME!” They ran faster, down the stairs. Clio cursed stairs and begged her gods to bring an end to them and whoever invented them.

In a disgusting quirk of irony, with a terrifying roar, the stairs fell away. She could see the ground floor, meters below them. All the stairs before them had collapsed and left them with a sheer drop to the ground below.

Daphne leaped. As she travelled through the air, Clio prayed that her legs would hold. Thank Iros, they did. She landed with her usual cat-like grace and rolled into a trouper’s tumble. In the blink of an eye, she had spun around, ready for the other two.

“Kai, you have to jump.” Clio urged. It was only then that she realized he was barely conscious. He had used so much of his own weave he seemed like a drunkard; barely able to keep his legs or understand speech.

“Throw him.” Daphne called up.

Without a moment’s hesitation, that’s exactly what Clio did. Of course, Clio didn’t have the strength to lift the Aquan – virtually two meters tall and thick as honeyed mead – over her head. Instead, she braced her shield against him and gave a mighty push. He tumbled through the air, head over heels and heels over head.

Though Daphne was waiting, ready to catch him, it was impossible to judge his trajectory. He flew like a ragdoll tossed by a child. When he came down on his head and shoulders it was probably thanks to Daphne’s efforts that he didn’t break his neck then and there. Even so, he landed heavily and painfully. Clio barely waited for him to land before leaping herself.

She could feel the remainder of the timber crumbling away beneath her. Her foot shattered through as she leaped. Clio could have kissed Daphne as she watched the Tainted drop Kai and ready herself to catch the Dwarf.

Clio landed in Daphne’s arms and the two fell in a heap to the ceramic tiles below. Clio gave Daphne a quick peck on the cheek as thanks before raising her shield to fend off some more falling sections of the ceiling.

As the house crumbled around them, Clio and Daphne grabbed Kai and ran to the entrance hall. Clio left the other two and took point. She charged down the hall, shield raised. Directly toward the door. She could hear Daphne groaning in her attempt to keep up. She could hear the house screaming: “I AM ANCEINT. SACRIFICE ALL TO ME!”

The door loomed ahead. Clio prayed to Iros to give her the strength to break on through to the other side. She put all of herself into that charge. Speeding down the ceramic tiled floor before crashing into the solid timber door.

She heard the impact of bronze on wood. She heard the groaning of joints and hinges, but the door held. Every fibre of that wood strained against her weight, but even with the house crumbling around them, the door held. Just. She could smell the outside coming through the bursting seams.

Then, Daphne, dragging Kai, tumbled into Clio. They fell into the Dwarf with such force that the weight of the three of them together smashed through the solid timber door. The Triumvirate burst from the house and out onto the deserted street before them.

Clio dragged the other two forward, further into the street as the cursed house crumbled behind them. They watch the facade fall away to reveal the crumbling structure. Clio allowed herself to breathe a deep sigh of relief.

They had done it. They had delved the depths of a cursed house. A curse so powerful she still shuddered to think of it. Between the three of them, luck, and the blessings of the Gods, they had made it out alive, if just barely.

She reached into her pack and took out her medical supplies. Kai had passed out. He was breathing shallow, shuddering breaths next to her. Daphne was nursing more wounds than she had hands to cover.

Clio fed Kai some water from her water skin before breathing into his mouth, so close that their lips touched. He had done similar to her once when she had almost drowned.

She breathed the smallest of her reservoir into him and relaxed when his breathing steadied. The two of them would now be connected for all time. The effort might have killed her but it hadn’t. She whispered a silent thanks to her goddess. In the state they were all in, she was acting entire out of instinct. She would have to deal with the consequences later.

At any rate, Kai could be left to sleep in the middle of the street as Clio went about tending to Daphne’s wounds. She rubbed balm on those that still bled to staunch the flow. She wrapped them all and prayed they would not infect. Daphne looked as close to passing out as Kai did.

“What was that thing?” The Tainted managed to utter in a whisper that reminded Clio of that horrible chamber in the basement they had just escaped.

“The monster?” Clio confirmed, before breathing deeply. “That is the perversion that comes to exist when a sacrifice saves itself out of cowardice in its final moments. It’s the twisted result of all the pain and suffering that man Petros, inflicted on his wife, and child, and maid and countless others. That thing was Petros, or a version of him. At least that is my reckoning if I had to hazard a guess.”

Daphne managed a short painful nod. “And the house?”

“The house is beyond me. Its power seemed to touch that of the gods, if only just. But the Weave is large and complex beyond all comprehension. There could be any number of explanations that I cannot fathom at this point. All I know for certain is that it was old. Old, and powerful, and evil in a way most Matu never witness.”

Clio said all this as bricks fell away to reveal the structure’s skeleton, and then even that began to crumble. As though all the ages that the foul power of the house had held back for so long crushed it all at once. The weight of hundreds of years condensed into a moment. Then with scream that was pain, and torment and wood and clay rent in two, the house was nothing more than rubble and dust.

“All I know for certain is that between the three of us, we destroyed something foul, something evil. And that is a sure way to find yourself in favour of the Gods. Even now I can feel a slight lightening in my heart. Don’t you feel it too?” Clio asked Daphne.

As she turned to see the Tainted’s reaction she realized that Daphne too had passed into a quite slumber. Kai was even snoring on Clio’s other side. Their breathing was so incongruous that the Dwarf couldn’t hear even a hint of the chanting that had pounded inside her head moments ago. She could barely even remember it.

So, Clio sat in the packed dirt that passed for a street in that tiny morose town on the island of Bris. She sat with the two people she loved most in the world, as they slept soundly on either side of her. She brushed Daphne’s hair with one hand as a small weight lifted from her shoulder and held Kai’s arm as questions of the future threated to burden her with a different weight.

As she sat in that quiet, lonely street she was surprised once more. The thinnest sliver of dawn’s rosy fingers pierced the veil of cloud and fog. Sunlight had not done so on the island of Bris since before the dawn of the third age.

It shone, in a wisp no thicker than a hair, but it shone. It rested at Clio’s feet, and in the dirt before her, Clio thought very much that it looked remarkably like the symbol of her Goddess, Iros. It only lasted for a moment, but once it left, Clio felt – for a very brief moment – that perhaps everything would be okay.